Tuesday 9 April | 8:30am
FREE SESSION FOR PRINCIPALS
Building Principal and Staff Wellbeing: Important Factors in Building Whole-school Wellbeing

Dr Lucy Hone

Dr Lucy Hone is a director of the New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing & Resilience, a research associate at AUT University, a published academic researcher, author and blogger for Psychology Today.

On Queen's Birthday weekend in 2014, the sudden death of her 12 year old daughter, Abi, (along with Lucy and Abi's friends Ella and Sally Summerfield in a tragic road accident) forced Lucy to turn her substantial academic training and professional practice to foster resilience in very personal circumstances. The blog she wrote in the aftermath of Abi's death attracted international attention and resulted in the best-selling non-fiction title, What Abi Taught Us, Strategies for Resilient Grieving (Allen & Unwin, 2016), now available as Resilient Grieving in the US, UK and NZ.

Having been trained by the thought-leaders in the field – Marty Seligman, Chris Peterson, Barb Fredrickson, Karen Reivich and Angela Duckworth among others – at the University of Pennsylvania she went on to attain her PhD in public health at AUT University in Auckland. She now assists organisations – from leading law firms to primary schools – to design and implement wellbeing initiatives creating sustained and meaningful change. The widespread respect for Lucy's work is demonstrated by the two large-scale pilot projects she is currently running involving dozens of NZ schools, both backed by Ministry of Education funding.

A member of the NZAPP Executive Committee, the All Right? advisory board, the conference convenor for Positive Education NZ, and New Zealand's only representative of the International Positive Education Network (IPEN), Lucy's research has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Positive Psychology, Social Indicators Research, the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the International Journal of Wellbeing and NZ Journal of Human Resources Management.

Tuesday 9 April | 8:30am

FREE SESSION FOR PRINCIPALSBuilding Principal and Staff Wellbeing: Important Factors in Building Whole-school Wellbeing

Principal and teacher wellbeing is an integral part of building whole-school wellbeing. As leaders, principals influence the wellbeing and culture of their schools, and teacher wellbeing is strongly related to student learning and wellbeing. We hope that identifying the organisational benefits of staff wellbeing can help motivate busy principals and teachers to prioritise their own wellbeing. NZ Principals report almost twice the burnout and stress levels of the general population. Burnout affects those most deeply invested in their careers, for whom work is an important source of meaning – that includes principals and teachers. In this presentation Dr Quinlan and Dr Hone emphasise the protective nature of wellbeing and will share strategies to build wellbeing and keep burnout at bay. They will also introduce a wellbeing planning approach, for all educators, that places personal wellbeing within a framework of systemic and school factors, as well as sharing strategies for addressing these factors, and underlining the important role of peer support and accountability in sustainable wellbeing change.

This free session for Principals highlights the importance of Principal wellbeing - not only for the individuals concerned, but also for effective school leadership, and the ability to support and lead staff wellbeing. We know burnout affects those most deeply invested in their careers - for whom work is an important source of meaning – making NZ Principals at risk. This session shares strategies to protect wellbeing and avoid burnout. It will also introduce a wellbeing planning framework that supports principals to work with staff to identify and address school-level wellbeing factors.